A General Strategy to Fabricate Highly Filled Microcomposite

Lie Chen, yichao Xu, yusi Liu, Ziguang Zhao, Chuangqi Zhao, Wenwei Lei, Qinfeng Rong, Ruochen Fang, Tianyi Zhao, and Mingjie Liu. ACS Appl. Mater...
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A General Strategy to Fabricate Highly Filled Microcomposite Hydrogels with High Mechanical Strength and Stiffness Zhandong Gu, Lie Chen, yichao Xu, yusi Liu, Ziguang Zhao, Chuangqi Zhao, Wenwei Lei, Qinfeng Rong, Ruochen Fang, Tianyi Zhao, and Mingjie Liu ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Just Accepted Manuscript • DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b17689 • Publication Date (Web): 08 Jan 2018 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on January 8, 2018

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A General Strategy to Fabricate Highly Filled Microcomposite Hydrogels with High Mechanical Strength and Stiffness Zhandong Gu†, Lie Chen†, Yichao Xu†, Yusi Liu, Ziguang Zhao†, Chuangqi Zhao†, Wenwei Lei†, Qinfeng Rong†, Ruochen Fang†, Tianyi Zhao*, † and Mingjie Liu*, †, ‡ †Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P. R. China ‡

International Research Institute for Multidisciplinary Science, Beihang University, Beijing

100191, P. R. China KEYWORDS: hydrogel, highly filled, microcomposite, strength, stiffness

ABSTRACT: Conventional synthetic hydrogels are intrinsically soft and brittle, which severely limit the scope of their applications. A variety of approaches have been proposed to improve the mechanical strength of hydrogels. However, a facile and ubiquitous strategy to prepare hydrogels with high mechanical strength and stiffness is still a challenge. Here we report a general strategy to prepare highly filled microcomposite hydrogels with high mechanical performance by using the ultrasonic assistant. The microparticles were dispersed in the polymer network evenly,

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resulting in homogeneous and closely packed structures. The as-prepared hydrogels with extraordinary mechanical performance, can endure compressive stress up to 20 MPa (at 75% strain), and exhibit high stiffness (elastic modulus is around 18 MPa). By using our comprehensive strategy, different hydrogels can enhance their mechanical strength and stiffness by doping various microparticles, leading to a much wider variety of applications.

INTRODUCTION Hydrogel, as one kind of classic polymer materials that contain large amounts of water in their three-dimensional cross-linked hydrophilic networks, have attracted considerable attention in varieties of fields, such as tissue engineering1-4, water treatment5-6, drug delivery7-10, and biosensing11-12. However, most of hydrogels usually suffer from low mechanical strength and limited stiffness due to their intrinsic structural inhomogeneity and lacking of effective energy dissipation mechanism13, which severely limit their applications in many areas, especially in load-bearing materials, like materials for cartilage replacement14 and artificial muscles15. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a new kind of hydrogel materials with high mechanical properties for practical applications. During the past few decades, many efforts have been made to improve the mechanical strength of hydrogels, and various hydrogel fabricated by different methods have been reported, such as double-network hydrogels16-18 (DN gels), nanocomposite hydrogels19-22 (NC gels), tetra polyethylene

glycol

hydrogels

(tetra-PEG

hydrogels)23-24,

sliding-ring

hydrogels25-27,

macromolecular microsphere composite hydrogels28, and physical interaction hydrogels29-41 (including hydrogen bonding, dipole–dipole interaction, hydrophobic interaction, and electrostatic interaction).

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The DN hydrogels, which generally composed of a rigid and brittle heterogeneous polyelectrolyte first network and a soft and ductile second network, exhibit high fracture stress and toughness comparable to rubbers16. The NC gels are composed of exfoliated clay uniformly dispersed in an aqueous medium with a number of flexible polymer chains linking them together36.They can deform to a large extent without any damage under compression or elongation. This is due to the anisotropic and high aspect ratio morphology of the nanoclay which result in strong interactions between the polymers and nanoclay. Tetra-PEG hydrogels composed of the radiation crosslinking of hydrophilic polymers are soft and highly extensible. These hydrogels typically possess homogeneous networks and avoid the high crosslink density clusters42. The well-defined networks of PEG hydrogels have a very high elongation at break (400 ~ 1600 %) with large tensile strength (680 ~ 2390 kPa). Sliding-ring hydrogels were consisted of PEG chains and ɑ-cyclodextrin (ɑ-CD), whose crosslinkers are able to slide along the polymer chains, exhibit high extensibility and swelling ratio (≈400)25. However, most of the strategies either suffer from the complex fabrication process or limited by the raw materials. Therefore, a facile and ubiquitous strategy to prepare hydrogels combining high mechanical strength with stiffness is desperately needed. In this study, we synthesized highly filled microcomposite hydrogels (HFM hydrogels) by using ultrasonic-assisted technology and the resultant hydrogels could realize high strength and stiffness simultaneously. The compression strength reaches 20 MPa at 75% strain, and the compressive elastic modulus is increased to 18 MPa. This easy accomplished general strategy could avoid tedious and time-consuming process effectively. Moreover, this strategy can be applied to numerous microparticles and monomers. A variety of microparticles (SiO2, Al2O3, and CaCO3) and monomers (N, N-Dimethyl acrylamide, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, acrylic acid,

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and acrylamide) were used in this method. We believe that these highly filled microcomposite hydrogels have great potential to be used as load-bearing materials such as structural materials, soft robotics, and artificial tissues.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The highly filled microcomposite hydrogels (HFM hydrogels) were synthesized through a radical copolymerization process with the monomer, cross-linker, initiator, accelerator and microparticles (Figure 1b). First, the precursor solution with certain concentrate of monomer and cross-linker was prepared. Then a large amount of microparticles were slowly added to the precursor solution in an ultrasonic environment. To make sure the solution was highly filled with microparticles, the ultrasonic was further kept for 10 minutes after the microparticle powders were added. Then the precursor solution became viscous after the ultrasonic stimulation was applied (Figure 1c), demonstrating that the microparticles were closely packed in the precursor solution. Finally, the HFM hydrogels were synthesized via in situ free-radical polymerization (Figure 1b). After the reaction, microparticles were trapped in the polymeric network constituted by covalently cross-linked hydrogel chains, forming a white HFM hydrogel (Figure 1c). For comparison, the pure hydrogel without the addition of microparticles was also fabricated following the same procedure Figure 2 shows the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the microparticles and the corresponding HFM hydrogels with different monomers. The homogeneous and closely packed structures of HFM hydrogels were confirmed by the SEM images. As observed in the SEM images, microparticles were dispersed in hydrogel network evenly regardless of the type

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of microparticles and their particle size. This uniformly dispersed structure with rigid inorganic microparticles and soft polymers would contribute to the high mechanical strength. The polymers matrix fill the gaps between the microparticles and connect the neighboring microparticles (Figure S6 Supporting Information). This closely packed structures with rigid microparticles are the key to enhance the stiffness of the hydrogel obviously. Many other particles and monomers were also test to successfully form uniformly dispersed structures. This demonstrate that our method is could be widely used to fabricate high mechanical strength hydrogels. The resultant hydrogels exhibit excellent mechanical performance with high stiffness and compression strength. For instance, when the HFM hydrogels were prepared with SiO2 microparticles (particle size, ≈5 μm) and N, N-Dimethyl acrylamide (DMA) monomer, the hydrogel could sustain loading weight of 2 kg (approximately 800 times its own weight) without any noticeable deformation (Figure. 3a). The stiffness of HFM-DMA hydrogel results from the additional the relatively rigid microparticles and the closely packed of the microparticles in the polymer network. Furthermore, the above mentioned HFM hydrogels could sustain a high compression strain (more than 85%) and will recover most of its original shape after removing the load (Figure. 3c), while the pure hydrogels without microparticles break down easily. We believe that the uniformly dispersed homogeneous structure with inorganic microparticles and soft polymers greatly contribute to the effective energy dissipation, leading to the high mechanical strength property. The mechanical properties of the HFM hydrogels and the pure hydrogels were measured using compression tests at room temperature. Figure 4a-d show the typical strain-stress curves of HFM hydrogels and the pure hydrogels under compression. Although the pure hydrogels may

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not break under deformation during the test, the applied stress with a value as long as 0.54 MPa can easily compress it to 75% strain. However, the HFM-DMA hydrogels filled with SiO2 is able to sustain the stress of 13.8 MPa (particle size, ≈10 μm) and 20.5 MPa (particle size, ≈5 μm) at 75% strain, which is about 25 times and 37 times higher than the pure hydrogels. The stress could achieve higher value when the hydrogels were further compressed. Same to the HFMDMA hydrogels, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) hydrogels filled with SiO2 (Figure 4c) could also achieve high stress of 9.8 MPa (particles size, ≈10 μm) and 17.5MPa (particles size, ≈5 μm) at the strain up to 75%. The HFM hydrogel prepared by HEMA is nonswellable in water, and their mechanical performance will not be affected (Figure S5 supporting information). The mechanical strength of the hydrogels could also be significantly improved by adding different microparticles (Figure S1 – S4 Supporting Information). The microparticles covered by the polymer matrix in the hydrogel network act as physical cross-linking points, can effectively transfer energy across the interface and reduce stress concentration. Figure 4b, d show that the strength of the hydrogels could be easily turned by the changing or the monomer concentration, providing that the mechanical propertied of hydrogels could strongly affected by the concentration of monomers and cross-linkers. Although numerous approaches to prepare high mechanical strength hydrogels have been proposed, it is still a challenge to synthesize hydrogel with both high toughness and stiffness simultaneously, since these two properties are often inversely related43. Most hydrogels are either stiff and brittle with low fracture energy or tough and compliant with low elastic modulus. Here, we demonstrate that the HFM hydrogels could achieve both toughness and stiffness. Figure 3a demonstrates the high stiffness of the hydrogels, the hydrogel could sustain a loading weight of 2 kg (more than 800 times the hydrogels) without any deformation. The elastic modulus of the

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HFM hydrogel and the pure hydrogel are shown in Figure 4e-h. Although the pure hydrogel consisting of 40 wt% DMA could reach a high strain, while its elastic modulus is only 0.18 MPa (Figure 4e). The HFM hydrogel filled with SiO2 particles has a much larger elastic modulus 6.2 MPa (particles size, ≈10 μm) and 18.2 MPa (particles size, ≈5 μm), which are nearly 34 times and100 times larger than that of the pure hydrogels. Same to the DMA hydrogels, the HFMHEMA hydrogels filled with SiO2 particles could obtain larger elastic modulus about 10.6 MPa (particles size, ≈10 μm) and 18.4 MPa (particles size, ≈5 μm), which are approximately 28 times and 49 times higher than that of the pure hydrogels. This result offer powerful evidence for the validity of our hydrogel fabrication strategy that could obtain the high strength and stiffness simultaneously, owing to the synergistic effect of the rigid microparticles and soft polymer matrix. In the HFM hydrogels, the rigid microparticles increase the stiffness while the polymer matrix dissipates energy to achieve high strength. Other hydrogels filled with various microparticles with different particle size also have much higher elastic modulus than the pure hydrogels (Figure S1 – S4 Supporting Information). The detailed synthesis conditions of hydrogels and mechanical properties are shown in Table 1 and Table 2. From the data of the tables, we could conclude that the mechanical performance is remarkably enhanced by our method, and this microcomposite-reinforced effect can be observed from various microparticles hydrogels with different microparticles. CONCLUSION In this work, highly filled microcomposite hydrogels with excellent mechanical properties were fabricated by a simple and feasible strategy. Microparticles were homogeneously dispersed and closely packed in the polymer network by ultrasonic-assistant. Then the hydrogel was synthesized via in situ free-radical polymerization and the microparticles were fixed in the

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network. The HFM hydrogels could have a high stiffness due to the closely packed rigid microparticles. Furthermore, the soft polymer matrix covers on the microparticles dissipates energy effectively, resulting the high strength of HFM hydrogels. Thus, the combination of rigid inorganic microparticles and soft polymer matrix in the HFM hydrogel result the synergistic effect on the high mechanical performance. Moreover, this general approach has less limitation in the gelation process and raw materials compared with conventional methods. In summary, our HFM hydrogels fabricated by ultrasonic-assistant exhibit high mechanical performance, could serve as an ideal load-bearing material in a variety of applications. This general strategy for the fabrication of HFM hydrogels study provides new avenues to the universal design and manufacturing of hydrogels, broaden the current research and application scopes of hydrogels with excellent properties. EXPERIMENTAL SECTION Materials. N, N-Dimethyl acrylamide (DMA), 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), acrylic acid (AAc), acrylamide (AAm), ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA), ammonium persulfate (APS), N, N, N, N-tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED), calcium carbonate (CaCO3) with particle size less than 30 μm were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. Silicon dioxide (SiO2) with particle size about 10 μm and 5 μm, aluminum oxide (Al2O3) with particle size about 5 μm were purchased from Shanghai Aladdin Bio-Chem Technology Co. LTD. All the reagents were used without further purification, and Milli-Q water (Millipore, USA) was used in all experiments. Preparation of hydrogel. The highly filled microcomposite hydrogel were fabricated via in situ free-radical polymerization with microparticles. Firstly, 20 mL of the precursor solution

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containing monomers (DMA, HEMA, AAc, or AAm), chemical cross-linker (EGDMA) and initiator (APS) were prepared. Then, 15 μL accelerator TEMED was added to the solution. The monomer concentration was 20 wt% ,30 wt% or 40 wt% of the solution, the concentrations of the chemical cross-linker and initiator were 1 wt% and 0.5 wt% of the monomer respectively. The mixed had been deoxygenated for 20 min with nitrogen gas. Secondly, 5 mL solution was poured into a test tube, then the microparticles were added to the test tube slowly in an ultrasonic environment. (40 KHz, 100W. KQ-2200DV, Kunshan Ultrasonic Instruments Co. LTD) To make sure the solution was highly filled with the microparticle powders, the ultrasonic was further kept for 10 minutes after the microparticle powders were added. Lastly, the test tube was placed in the oven and kept at 40 ℃ for 4 h to complete the polymerization. As control experiment, the pure hydrogels were also prepared by the same procedure without adding microparticle powders. Characterization. The morphologies of the HFM hydrogels were performed with a fieldemission scanning electron microscope (JSM-7500F, JEOL, Tokyo, Japan) at 5 kV and the samples were coated with a thin layer of gold before examination. Mechanical tests. Hydrogels were prepared in cylindrical shape (12 mm in diameter and 12 mm in height). The dimensions of each sample were measured using a digital caliper before testing. The mechanical tests of the hydrogels were performed at room temperature using a commercial tester equipped with a 1kN load cell (Shen Zhen Suns Technology Stock Co. LTD). The compression tests were conducted at a loading rate of 5 mm/min. The pure hydrogel without microparticles was used as the control. To ensure the accuracy, every test carried out on different types of hydrogels was repeated five times.

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Figure 1 The schematic illustration of preparation of the highly filled microcomposite hydrogel. (a) The monomers and crosslinker used to prepare the highly filled microcomposite hydrogel (b) Preparation of the highly filled microcomposite hydrogel by using ultrasonic-assistant strategy. (c) Photos of precursor solution before applying ultrasonic (left), after applying ultrasonic (middle) and polymerization (right).

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Figure 2. SEM images of different particles and the corresponding HFM hydrogels with different monomers. (a) SiO2 particles (≈5μm) and corresponding HFM hydrogels (b) SiO2 particles (≈10 μm) and corresponding HFM hydrogels (c) Al2O3 particles (≈5 μm) and corresponding HFM hydrogels (d) CaCO3 particles (≈30 μm) and corresponding HFM hydrogels.

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Figure 3. The optical photographs of the mechanical performance of the HFM hydrogels. (a) HFM hydrogels consisted of 40 wt% DMA and SiO2 particles (≈5 μm) could sustain loading weight of 2 kg without any deformation. (b) Pure hydrogels with 40 wt% DMA could not sustain the loading weight of 2 kg. (c) HFM hydrogels consisted of 40 wt% DMA and SiO2 particles (≈5 μm) could sustain high compression stress and recover most of its original shape (d) Pure hydrogels with 40 wt%. DMA break down easily when compressed.

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Figure 4. The stress-strain curves and corresponding elastic modulus of various HFM hydrogels. (a), (e) 40 wt% DMA hydrogel with different SiO2 particles (≈10 μm and≈ 5 μm). (b), (f) DMA hydrogels with SiO2 particles (≈5 μm) and different monomer concentrations. (c), (g) 40 wt% HEMA hydrogel with different SiO2 particles (≈10 μm and ≈5 μm). (d), (h) HEMA hydrogels with SiO2 particles (≈5 μm) and different monomer concentrations.

Table 1 Mechanical properties of the HFM-DMA hydrogels

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Table 2 Mechanical properties of the HFM-HEMA hydrogels

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ASSOCIATED CONTENT Supporting Information The stress-strain curves and corresponding elastic modulus of the HFM hydrogels with different monomers particles. AUTHOR INFORMATION Corresponding Author *E-mail: [email protected] *E-mail: [email protected] Notes The authors declare no competing financial interest

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (21574004), the National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar (21725401), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0207800), the 111 project (B14009), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the National ‘Young Thousand Talents Program’. REFERENCES

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